Elderly dementia patients and “at-risk” students create friendships

April 14, 2010|By Ted Gregory, Tribune reporter

As the school bus lumbered to a stop outside the Hyde Park midrise, one of the 10 students on board blurted out the thought that had preoccupied most of them since the start of their journey about 20 minutes earlier.

"I'm scared," she shouted.

These students attended one of Chicago's most troubled high schools — Bowen Environmental Studies Team — where only 7 percent of students passed state competency exams in 2008 and where more than 95 percent live in poverty. Last year, five teens were killed in the gang-ravaged South Chicago neighborhood around BEST.

That rainy Monday in October, each of the students was about to meet a retiree with dementia as part of a 12-week class called Memory Bridge. The goal of bringing the disparate groups together at Montgomery Place was to restore both — tapping the sometimes-buried empathy of the teens, and helping the dementia patients engage in unexpected ways.

The students, who included freshmen August Averett, who dreams of becoming a surgeon, and Vance Sanders, who has his eye on a career in music, were about to embark on an experiment in emotional intelligence, a growing movement that emphasizes managing emotions to enhance learning.

Armed with information from short biographies of their retiree "buddies," August, Vance and their classmates tentatively entered the nursing home's third-floor lounge. The residents sat silently at tables, on couches or in wheelchairs. Everyone shook hands.

After some small talk, August asked 83-year-old Eva Weinberg whether she had children.

"Can I guess their names?" August wondered. Then she rattled off the names of Eva's four children, which she had memorized from the biography.

"How did you do that?" a stunned Weinberg asked. August just grinned.

Vance chatted with William Bryant, who talked about his childhood in Little Rock, Ark., and Kentucky and how his father pulled him out of college in New Orleans because he was "having too much fun" and enrolled him at The Tuskegee Institute.

The visit had its rocky moments. Memory Bridge coordinator Michael Verde called on the students to introduce their partners and talk a little about them. August started by saying she was in 9th grade.

"What grade am I in?" one of the elderly residents interrupted. "I'm in first grade. Ha ha. Kindergarten."

More outbursts followed. A man shouted his name. A woman sang.

On the ride back to Bowen, students laughed about how one patient stared and drooled, how another kept asking what school they attended. Vance joked about Bryant repeatedly saying he was born in Little Rock.

August grinned, but not at the comments of the others. She was intrigued by her new friendship — and proud. Weinberg had also attended Bowen, she learned, and had escaped the Holocaust.

"I think I did good," August said, smiling. "She laughed a lot."

Motivated by the death of a grandfather with dementia, Verde created Memory Bridge in 2005 as a teacher at Lake Forest Academy. He was so moved by the joyful interactions he witnessed between young and old that he thought the empathy and attentiveness needed to reach those dementia patients could also help create peace in Chicago's most dangerous schools.

The Illinois Department of Human Services funded Memory Bridge and began offering it to Chicago Public Schools in 2006. More than 2,000 students at more than 100 Chicago public schools have participated.

"It's not just about people with dementia," Verde said. "It's about what we're all forgetting. And what these people are not only remembering, but what they can teach us about being human."

Memory Bridge is an example of social and emotional learning, a popular education trend designed to develop skills to manage emotions, form positive relationships, achieve goals and avoid risky behavior. Research shows that these programs improve test scores, emotional health and classroom behavior.

In December, U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., introduced a bill authorizing federal funding for training in the field. That measure remains in a House education subcommittee.

Memory Bridge came to BEST through its music teacher and service learning coach, 27-year-old Philip Kendall. Kendall, born and raised on an Indiana farm, was frustrated by the instability, anxiety and lack of hope his students endured every day. He observed a Memory Bridge project in 2009, thought it might help and contacted Verde. The music teacher then recruited students with a little more academic ambition than most; students with engaging personalities, depth and curiosity. The two men structured the class — which fit into the school's community service requirement — to include seven sessions at BEST and five visits to Montgomery Place.

In his first meeting with the students, Verde told them that, by nurturing empathy, they were going to create "the kind of magic that makes people appear."

"If you feel with someone," he said, "some very extraordinary things begin to happen."